Observations of planet Earth from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on July 11, 2005. Photo by: NASA. Seventeen top scientists and four acclaimed conservation organizations have called for radical…
An apparent carbon deal between an Irish carbon trading company and an indigenous tribe that sparked outrage in Brazil is "invalid" according to the president of FUNAI, Brazil's indigenous affairs…
Male lion in the Okavango Delta. © National Geographic Entertainment. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Now that California's carbon market has arrived, an Australian-based company that specializes in forest carbon…
A program proposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and degradation made mixed progress during climate talks in Durban. Significant questions remain about financing and safeguards to protect against…
Jonas Meckling, PhD., writes the first critical analysis demonstrating how various types of not-for-profit, governmental and for-profit coalitions over the past couple of decades have led to the development of…
Bucking long-stalled efforts in the US to combat global climate change, California has approved final rules for a cap-and-trade program set to go into effect in 2013. The program will…
An aerial view of an Amazon tributary in Peru, one of the top countries for projects in the young forest carbon market. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Investors funneled $178…
Australia's parliament passed the world's first national carbon trading scheme for credits generated from farming and forestry, reports Reuters. The program, dubbed the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI), allows farmers to…
Tribes in Washington state will participate in a pilot project to test the feasibility of developing forest carbon projects on tribal lands, reports EcoAnalytics, a carbon advisory firm involved in…
The forest organization, FERN, has pulled its support from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), reports FSC-Watch. FERN has quit the increasingly troubled organization due to FSC pursuing carbon credits through…
The voluntary carbon market posted a 34 percent gain in 2010, trading a record 131 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtC02e). While the US accounted for the majority of…
PUMA, the sporting goods brand, and its parent company PPR will offset their 2010 carbon dioxide emissions by purchasing carbon credits generated through conservation of wildlife habitat in Kenya. The…
Rainforest in West Kalimantan, Indonesia Avoided Deforestation Partners, a forest conservation group, has coordinated the development of an "open source" forest carbon accounting methodology that could help speed projects aiming…
The global carbon markets began quietly in the late 1980s as part of a voluntary effort to save rainforests, but these small, voluntary efforts were quickly eclipsed – and often…
Carbon trading promotes good behavior by creating a standardized currency representing a verifiable environmental benefit. Payments for watershed services do the same for cutbacks in water pollution, albeit on a…
Carbon finance can help rural Africans establish more sustainable ways of doing business, and several efforts are underway to build carbon exchanges that can help project developers identify prices and…
A carbon conservation project in Kenya has become the first to win validation for REDD credits under the Voluntary Carbon Standard. The U.S.-based Wildlife Works said today the Voluntary Carbon…
Cyberthieves who hacked the Czech carbon registry on Tuesday had intimate knowledge of different registries. They acted just days before a key security upgrade would have made the heist impossible,…
The European Union temporarily shut down its carbon market after a security breach, reports Point Carbon. The European Commission suspended most of its Emissions Trading Scheme following the disclosure of…
A shorter version of this article appears on Yale e360 as Indonesia’s Corruption Legacy Clouds a Forest Protection Plan. The version that appears below was last revised on October 31,…
The California Air Resources Board voted 9-1 to adopt cap and trade regulations for AB32, California's 2006 climate law. The move, which establishes the first compliance carbon trading system in…
California and other states launched an international initiative that will work toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions and transitioning toward a low carbon economy in the absence of a global climate…
A letter in Nature from seven top scientists warns that Papua New Guinea's accessible forest will be lost or heavily logged in just ten to twenty years if swift action…
Plantations on peatlands will no longer be supported by the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a framework for industrialized countries to reduce their emissions via projects in developing countries, reports Wetlands…
Proyek konservasi hutan yang didukung oleh Shell, Gazprom Market and Trading dan Clinton Foundation di Pulau Borneo telah memenangkan persetujuan di bawah standar perhitungan karbon, menurut laporan Reuters. Proyek Rimba…
A forest conservation project backed by Shell, Gazprom Market and Trading and the Clinton Foundation on the island of Borneo has won approval under a carbon accounting standard, reports Reuters.…
A new study in Ecological Management & Restoration has found that reforesting rainforest captures more carbon than monoculture plantation and even mixed species plantations. The research tested three projects in…
Scientists convening in Bali expressed a range of concerns over a proposed mechanism for mitigating climate change through forest conservation, but some remained hopeful the idea could deliver long-term protection…
Not surprisingly, a US report released last week which argued that saving forests abroad will help US agricultural producers by reducing international competition has raised hackles in tropical forest counties.…
Reducing deforestation abroad helps protect the U.S. agricultural sector by ensuring higher prices for commodities and reducing the cost of compliance with expected climate regulations, argues a new report issued…